Free and Open Software: Benefits and Examples

Every time you unlock an Android phone, publish a blog on WordPress, or query a MySQL database, you are using software that was built in the open, by thousands of contributors who never charged you a license fee to look inside it. That is the essence of free and open source software, or FOSS: code that anyone can use, study, change, and redistribute. It is not a fringe movement anymore. It is the invisible infrastructure running most of the internet, and understanding how it works is now a basic part of business and computer literacy.

What “free” actually means here 🔗

The word “free” trips people up. In FOSS, it does not primarily mean “free of cost.” It means freedom of use. The Free Software Foundation defines free software as software that respects users’ freedom to run, study, share, and modify a program for any purpose. You can charge money for free software and still call it free, because the freedom lies in what you are permitted to do with the code, not in the price tag.

Free software, open source, and FOSS 🔗

Two related terms often get used interchangeably. Free software emphasises ethical freedoms and user rights. Open source software emphasises the practical benefits of publicly available source code, such as faster bug detection and collaborative improvement. FOSS is simply the umbrella term that covers both philosophies, since in practice the licenses and the code they produce overlap heavily.

The origin story: GNU, Stallman, and Torvalds 🔗

The movement has a fairly precise birthdate. In 1983, programmer Richard Stallman, then working at MIT, launched the GNU Project to build a completely free alternative to the proprietary Unix operating system that dominated computing at the time. Stallman founded the Free Software Foundation in 1985 and later wrote the GNU General Public License (GPL), the “copyleft” license that requires anyone who modifies and redistributes GPL-licensed code to keep it free as well.

GNU had almost everything an operating system needs, except a kernel, the core program that manages a computer’s hardware and processes. That gap was filled in 1991 by a Finnish student named Linus Torvalds, who released the Linux kernel. Combined with GNU’s tools, it became the GNU/Linux operating system that today powers everything from smartphones to supercomputers.

Everyday FOSS you are probably already using 🔗

FOSS is not an obscure hobbyist project. It sits underneath products used by billions of people daily.

MySQL is a good example of how nuanced these licenses can be. Its owner, Oracle, offers the database under the GPL for free use, while also selling a commercial license to companies that want to bundle it into proprietary products without releasing their own source code. This model, called dual licensing, lets a company fund development while still honouring the open source community. WordPress takes a stricter stance: because it is released under the GPLv2 or later, plugins and themes built on it are generally considered derivative works and inherit the same license.

Why FOSS matters: the core benefits 🔗

Businesses and governments do not adopt FOSS out of idealism alone. There are concrete operational reasons.

Lower cost of ownership 🔗

Without recurring license fees, organisations can redirect budgets toward customisation, support, or scaling infrastructure instead of paying per seat or per server.

Transparency and trust 🔗

Because the source code is public, anyone can audit it for hidden functions, bugs, or vulnerabilities. There is no need to simply trust a vendor’s word about what the software does internally.

Security through many eyes 🔗

Open code does not automatically mean secure code, but wide scrutiny does help catch flaws faster. A recent Linux Foundation study found that organisations contributing back to open source projects see upstream maintainers respond faster to security issues and bug reports, compared to those that simply consume the code passively and maintain private forks.

Flexibility and no vendor lock-in 🔗

Since the source code is available, businesses are not stuck with whatever features a single vendor decides to offer. They can modify the software themselves or hire a developer to do it, and switching providers does not mean starting from zero.

How does free software get funded? 🔗

If nobody is charging license fees, a natural question follows: who pays the developers? FOSS survives on a mix of funding streams rather than one predictable revenue line.

• Individual and community donations through platforms that let users tip maintainers directly for their work.
• Corporate sponsorships from companies that depend on a project and want to keep it healthy, such as cloud providers sponsoring the infrastructure they build on.
• Foundation grants from nonprofits set up specifically to fund critical open infrastructure.
• Dual licensing and paid support, where the core software stays free but companies pay for commercial licenses, enterprise features, or guaranteed support contracts.

This funding gap is a live issue, not a historical footnote. In 2026, the Linux Foundation announced $12.5 million in grants from major technology companies specifically to help open source maintainers cope with a surge in automated vulnerability reports, since many projects are maintained by small volunteer teams without the resources to triage that volume of work alone.

The challenges FOSS still faces 🔗

FOSS’s growth has not erased its structural weaknesses.

Funding instability: Donations and sponsorships can dry up quickly if a company changes priorities, leaving critical projects underfunded even when millions of users depend on them.

Maintainer burnout: A small number of volunteers often maintain software used by huge organisations, without proportional compensation or support staff.

Competition from proprietary software: Commercial products often bundle polished support, guaranteed SLAs, and marketing budgets that community-run projects cannot match, which can make FOSS a harder sell in risk-averse enterprise procurement.

Licensing complexity: Not all open licenses are the same, and mixing GPL code with proprietary code without understanding the terms can create legal exposure for a business.

FOSS in the Indian context 🔗

India has been an unusually active adopter of FOSS at the government level. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology’s Policy on Adoption of Open Source Software for Government of India states that government bodies should treat open source as the preferred option over closed source software for e-governance systems, mainly to reduce the total cost of ownership of public IT projects. This is not a blanket mandate; departments can still choose proprietary software if they can justify it, but open source has to be genuinely evaluated first. The policy sits alongside the broader Framework for Adoption of Open Source Software in e-Governance Systems, which pushes for open standards to make it easier for departments to migrate between systems without being locked into a single vendor.

For commerce students, this is a useful case study in how public procurement policy can shape an entire technology market, not just individual purchasing decisions.

Putting it together 🔗

FOSS is best understood as a different way of organising who owns and controls software, not just a way to avoid paying for it. It trades the predictable revenue of proprietary licensing for transparency, community-driven improvement, and long-term flexibility. That trade-off comes with real funding and sustainability challenges, but it has not stopped FOSS from becoming the backbone of modern computing, from the servers running e-commerce platforms to the phones in most people’s pockets.

What do you think? If you were running a small business in India today, would you default to open source tools like WordPress and MySQL to cut costs, or would you rather pay for proprietary software with guaranteed vendor support? And should companies that build their products on free open source code be expected to pay something back to the projects they depend on?

References

1. https://www.fsf.org/about/what-is-free-software
2. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Richard-Stallman
3. https://www.mysql.com/about/legal/licensing/oem/
4. https://wordpress.org/about/license/
5. https://www.linuxfoundation.org/press/new-linux-foundation-report-shows-active-open-source-contribution-delivers-2-5x-roi-while-passive-consumption-increases-costly-technical-debt
6. https://openssf.org/press-release/2026/03/17/linux-foundation-announces-12-5-million-in-grant-funding-from-leading-organizations-to-advance-open-source-security/
7. https://www.meity.gov.in/static/uploads/2024/02/policy_on_adoption_of_oss.pdf
8. https://egovstandards.gov.in/sites/default/files/2021-07/Framework%20for%20Adoption%20of%20Open%20Source%20Software%20in%20e-Governance%20Systems.pdf